Principles of western civilisation

148 WESTERN CIVILISATION ‘CHAP.

now the efficiency of organised society must be itself the measure of the resistance which society will offer to its own subordination to interests beyond the limits of its political consciousness. What we see is that the entire range of the processes of the human mind in its highest manifestations must be drawn into the vortex of this supreme conflict. In it we stand at the very pivot of the evolutionary process in human history. The whole content of systems of thought, of philosophy, of morality, of ethics, and of religion, must in time be caught into it. It is in the resulting demiurgic stress that rival systems of society will be unconsciously pitted against each other; that nations, and peoples, and great types of civilisation, will meet, and clash, and have their principles tested. And it is in respect of the controlling principle of the conflict—the degree of efficiency of the subordination of the present to the future—that Natural Selection will continue to discriminate between the living and the dead as the progress of the world continues.

dealt with in relation to the standards in Greek art discussed in the next chapter. The tendency of the emerging emotions which are related to the second epoch of social evolution is not yet clearly perceived, although it is one of the most disturbing influences in modern art. The still dominating influence of the impulses and emotions which are related to the first era of our social evolution is, however, well understood in the art of the drama. Ina recent address in England to an audience interested in the drama, Mr. W. L. Courtney created discussion by setting his hearers a psychological problem. In the first place, he asked, could a very good man be a hero. With all fear of certain dramatic critics before his eyes, he answered, ‘‘ No”; the exceptionally good man could not be a hero of drama, The reasons were obvious. In the first place, the drama dealt with action, and the saint was passive. In the second place, the drama dealt with emotions, and, ex /Ayfothesz, the saint was a man who had subdued emotion. In the third place, what an audience looked for in a hero was an exhibition of mastery, of force, of something which would engage their interest and make the hero significant.—Aadress to the O. P. Club, London.